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XPS Dellivered

A while ago, I was considering buying an HP laptop while grumbling about how hard it would be to carry around. Soon after that, I ordered a Dell XPS M1330 because for the size there just didn’t seem to be anything in the range that would get you discrete graphics at that price. In any case, they delivered it today, some 4 days outside the 8 business day promise they gave and some two weeks after the date originally on their website (8th April).

I’m real happy with what I got. Vista isn’t very good, there are times when even 3GB of RAM and the GeForce 8400M GS make the closing animation sluggish when running only one or two programs. That and I hate the way the screen flickers dark when UAC comes up. That flicker is really annoying. But over all, everything looks great, the screen is bright and clear and Vista’s font smoothing is really nice. The laptop itself is nice and light and has enough ports for me to be happy :)

Maybe I should’ve chosen an extra gigabyte of RAM instead of the processor. Nevermind, it should be easy to do, and I remember I used to get along just fine with just 1GB on my previous laptop. Still, the one thing I really miss getting is the WLED screen that everybody’s just raving about. Maybe in a few years :)

Vista came preinstalled. And frankly, I like it, though I can well imagine that it wouldn’t be great on lesser hardware because the animations are sometimes laggy (with a discrete graphics card! My Intel Integrated worked better with compiz). About the RAM, it’s paged out 1 gigabyte to swap! I’ve just started the computer and I’m only running Firefox (which takes 40MB).

Yeah, Karthik, it comes installed with the laptop. So when I was booting it up, I thought to myself, “You can choose not to accept the EULA and they’ll have to give you Rs. 2000 off”. But then I decided it wasn’t worth the trouble, especially considering they’d probably take ages to get down to giving me the money. This is India, after all.

Windows 7 is coming out early next year,which is (touted to be) way better than vista and xp.Right now,getting vista may not be that bad an option, because Microsoft is stopping production and support of Xp this June.

Hmm, I probably won’t get that. The only time I get a new version of Windows is when I buy a new computer.

The processor upgrade looked like only 2000 rupees from the T8100, but the prices change every other week. You’re better off checking for yourself on their own site. The lowest end processor they use will save you some 6000 compared to what I bought. However, when I googled for reviews of the laptop, the advertisements on the side pointed out a slight discount for a higher end model. That’s how I got what I did.

The same model, M1330? Nice. We’re practically cousins now. Oh yeah, the ear buds are really good, you have no clue how useful they are until you’ve listened to music while sitting 3 metres from a diesel portable power generator.

Yeah, mine is black too. Prices fluctuate, I guess I was lucky. How long did it take yours? I ordered on the 5th, got it on the 18th. Or something like that.